Monitoring where people look when reading a text and for how long can be done with various techniques that have been developed in the cognitive sciences (psychology, linguistics, and education). These techniques are self-paced reading methods and are based on the assumption that a participant will read at a rate matching the comprehension process. They are extremely useful in detecting when readers experience problems in a text, and how and how fast readers read the text. For instance, in moving windows paradigms readers press a button and a word appears on the screen. Even though this technique has been frequently used to measure reading processes, it does not allow for identifying reading difficulties beyond the word level and it requires a rather unnatural reading process. Other techniques, such as eye tracking, do allow for identifying reading difficulties at and beyond the word level, and are more natural. However, they require careful calibration, and do not allow for monitoring multiple readers over longer stretches of time, such as reading fluency and proficiency in classrooms.
Accordingly, what is needed is a more effective and efficient method of evaluating and assessing reading fluency that is natural, precise, and allows for monitoring multiple readers (e.g., a classroom or teaching environment).